Been a while hasn't it? It's been an interesting few months. The nameless inertia that seemed to dull my days has been shed, or, at least, so it would appear. I've been reading lately and thinking... reading and thinking... thinking and reading. My thoughts are still very much a blur, so much so that I've been having trouble sleeping on account of my mind refusing to pause. So, here I am, letting my wheels spin free in that hope that something with a degree of form may come of it ultimately.
"To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons may be safe fighting, indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. My greatest comfort and encouragement to proceed has been to see that those who have no shame, and no fear of anything else, have appeared touched by my satires." - Junius
If at all you know me, even a little, you will take offense over my words . For it is out of respect that I try to speak with honesty.
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." - Henry David Thoreau
The question is becoming clearer with each passing day of turmoil.
"Nature loves symmetry." - Louis de Broglie
The photon is at once both wave and particle as is matter. Does it therefore follow that man - as he relates to that within and that without - is dual-natured as well? Or does realization of the self demand reconciliation between the two?
"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau
Am I lost? If so, when? Is it when I wander, often aimlessly, within the corridors of my own mind? Or is it when I walk, seemingly with purpose, the streets out in the wilderness of human society?
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." - Henry David Thoreau
The aim is to distill the process of living until I arrive at the truth of my nature. The first step is to paint, in my mind, a clear vision of the ideal. (Needless to say, this process will be lifelong and iterative.)
"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the sufferage of the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I must possess the conviction to heed mine own voice and the stillness of mind to speak clearly to myself.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” - Henry David Thoreau
Indeed, I must be prepared for any test of my courage and resolve.
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after own own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
But, above all, I must seek balance.
"To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Importantly, the converse if often untrue. Many who are misunderstood and presume themselves great, do so falsely.
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." - Henry David Thoreau
I am off then, to do, to live.
"To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons may be safe fighting, indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. My greatest comfort and encouragement to proceed has been to see that those who have no shame, and no fear of anything else, have appeared touched by my satires." - Junius
If at all you know me, even a little, you will take offense over my words . For it is out of respect that I try to speak with honesty.
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." - Henry David Thoreau
The question is becoming clearer with each passing day of turmoil.
"Nature loves symmetry." - Louis de Broglie
The photon is at once both wave and particle as is matter. Does it therefore follow that man - as he relates to that within and that without - is dual-natured as well? Or does realization of the self demand reconciliation between the two?
"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau
Am I lost? If so, when? Is it when I wander, often aimlessly, within the corridors of my own mind? Or is it when I walk, seemingly with purpose, the streets out in the wilderness of human society?
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." - Henry David Thoreau
The aim is to distill the process of living until I arrive at the truth of my nature. The first step is to paint, in my mind, a clear vision of the ideal. (Needless to say, this process will be lifelong and iterative.)
"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the sufferage of the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I must possess the conviction to heed mine own voice and the stillness of mind to speak clearly to myself.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” - Henry David Thoreau
Indeed, I must be prepared for any test of my courage and resolve.
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after own own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
But, above all, I must seek balance.
"To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Importantly, the converse if often untrue. Many who are misunderstood and presume themselves great, do so falsely.
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." - Henry David Thoreau
I am off then, to do, to live.
11 comments:
At the risk of sounding like I'm talking out of my arse.
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." - Henry David Thoreau
I don't know much about Thoreau, but really, I don't know how disparate things like love and truth are, we know neither of them in absolute terms to classify.
"Nature loves symmetry." - Louis de Broglie
I think somehow it's more to do with the fact that we love to look for symmetry in nature. I think the fact that it provides more certainty to our lives, makes us crave for it. We would love to be able to put everything down to mathematical form, and logic. But then I guess, we don't have much choice there do we?
"To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
First of all, I don't understand this obsession we have with greatness. Don't you think trying to be different is the most common place thing to do? I know each one of us at some level wants that, but still.
And I think it just so happens that a lot of the "great" people are "misunderstood". Neither is the statement true always, nor is the converse.
Thanks for pointing these out. I agree with you on all three counts. I didn't elaborate on these issues in the post because of the style of writing I adopted which was to write freely as I went without any ateempt to refine/clarify previous statements. It was like thinking through the keyboard pretty much. However, you'll see that towards the end I start veering away from agreement with Thoreau and Emerson on the subject of greatness. In fact, I'm not sure one can even define the idea of greatness outside the context of human society, i.e. it's only defined in relative terms, never in the absolute. Therefore, one who seeks to look inward can not really be seeking greatness.
Dudes,
#1 Regarding love and truth...except for loving oneself, love (asspoken of in this context) requires someone else..to seek truth you need no one's company...often company is a hindrance to a genuine seeker
#2 I disagree...nature's relationship with mathematics is not something suited to our needs and convenience..I'm sure you know this...we wouldn't be looking for symmetry if we hadn't encountered it at some point in our history...symmetry is linked to information...it is cheaper in terms of computational costs to compute things which involve symmetry, it's a case of data compression according to J.Schmidhuber...a guy whose ideas you might wanna check out
I can defend the thesis that mathematical truths and the relationship of maths to nature are 'objectively real'...in more complex terms if I can find the time for it
#3 I agree with both of you on this...someone who is really after the truth and her/his inner self will grow wary of recognition in the world...the world recognises not substance, but sheen. Feynman's statement on honours coms to mind.
Best Wishes
#1) I agree with not needing company in the pursuit of truth. But I disagree with love being narrowly defined within the context of the human species alone. I do think that one's passions, for say nature or language for instance, if they run deep enough, will definitely cross over into the realm of love.
#2) Symmetry has two faces to it - the same ones as mathematics itself. At one level mathematics is simple a tool we use to come up with better and better simplifications to describe the universe. On another, it does manage to capture certain "objective" realities and even predict certain others. You should definitely read Richard Hamming's essay on "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics".
Dude,
#1 My reference to 'love' was set in the context of Partha's comment. I think he didn;t define love the way you do...
#2 The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences is a paper by Eugene Wigner if I am not wrong...read it..in fact I have a deep interest in mathematical Platonism versus anti-platonism...a Platonist like Kurt Goedel or Roger Penrose might tell you that the maths we 'make up' is actully 'out there'...this of course is not accepted by mainstream mathemtical cognition experts.
A book I'd recommend without hesitation is 18 Unconventional Essays on the Nature of Mathematics...by Reuben Hersh...check it out when you have the time.
I used to be a Platonist...now I am not committed to a particular view...I just think the usefulness of mathematics, even the most arcane things in maths, is a bit too interesting to dismiss as a fortunate coincidence.
Indeed it was Wigner's essay that inspired Hamming's 1980 essay on the effectiveness of mathematics in a broader sense. I actually have a pdf of '18...' - it's on my to-do list.
I'm no platonist like Penrose - however, I do believe that from time to time, mathematics has the potential to capture/reveal to human perception certain truths.
@Anand
#1 I was not talking about love or truth from any perspective or context.I would assume any pursuit of the questions we have would revolve around trying to find it in absolute terms. In which case, it cannot be restricted to self, or just the people around you. I don't think things like company or solitude matter when you seek the absolute. It should not be any hindrance.
#2 When I said we look for symmetry for our needs and convenience, I probably
did narrow down the perspective. I meant it more in terms of our need
to figure out what some thing is, and why it is so. Things like computational costs are of significance only because of our limitations, computationally,
or intelligence wise. Those are restrictions imposed on us. Look at something like turbulence in fluids, nearly 200 years of work and we have no clue how to deal with non-linearity, chaotic systems. We cannot imagine right now about modeling something like the stock market accurately, no one knows human behaviour. The information we have about problems in symmetry is enough to meet
our needs at this point. It is after all what you perceive that you put into mathematics.
#3 I'm not even talking about being wary of recognition. When you seek something absolute I don't think the situation arises at all. It's about distancing yourself from self, everything around you is a consequence of self. The only thing that drives
us as a species is that search for something absolute, something that will help us understand everything that goes on. Just that different people approach it in different
ways. The very fact that we make laws, impose restrictions in our society, pin things down
to order, is a testament to our inability to deal with anything that can be arbitrary.
I think.
Partha,
#1 - Holy Tarski!, you say we know neither truth nor love in absolute terms to classify...would you agree that 'truth' and 'love' are placeholders/warmers we use to refer to something we do not really know? For there would be no meaning to the quest if you knew what you were looking for (Socrates would disagree...and so would all vedAntins...but to be pedantic, even vedAntins who cry themselves hoarse over their school of thought will have to concede that one of the terms strongly predicated of the 'BraHmaN is 'aprameya'...)...
so regardless of the Matrix, philosophers et al, there may be no such thing as a 'knowable' absolute...a bit like 'the tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal tao'...
From a question of what is to be known...we come to what is meant by knowing..and the limits and potential of this capability 'to know'...
we evolved! The primary function of the human animal is perpetuation of DNA...and nearly everything we have as humans is in some sense, however weak it may be, constrained by this central fact...(religious folks may disagree...but look at how all world religions bless newlyweds to have many children...that's biological advantage wearing purple pajamas to attract attention..I'm sure you'll agree)....
given this 'fact' why should we think we may be capable of knowing the absolute..or even if such a thing exists.
No..I am not denying anything...I for one, like unification of disaprate strands of knowledge, and have done a little bit of reading on different conceptions of the absolute...yet...I wonder if it is just a question of adopting a convenient personal frame of reference to feel 'connected' to something that is intrinsically inaccessible to cognition...am I making sense?
"In which case, it cannot be restricted to self, or just the people around you. I don't think things like company or solitude matter when you seek the absolute. It should not be any hindrance."
Not so sure on that...see, let's do it this way
Case 1. There is an absolute and it is 'The Absolute' and it 'Can Be Known'...
In this case, one would have to find out what the means are for obtaining certain knowledge of The One True Thingumajig...this leads us directly to the question of whether there is One Method or many...this is why we have religions (all of them lay claim to (eventual attainment of)certain knowledge of the absolute through some gimmick or the other, call it grace, prapatti, yoga,meditation-awareness, faith, submission, Carrot-Juice etc.)and we all know what that has brought upon humanity...!
If you are seeking this absolute, and you are in the company of people who neither understand nor respect your quest, then you will face impediments to your progress. You may be perfectly poised, detached and contemplative, but 'people' at least some of them are born with the ability to throw a dozen spanner into 'the works', without provocation. To avoid this, your best bet is solitude, as it eliminates distractions and you can do some genuine business...once you've made progress, you can return to the company of others, and either share your knowledge (to those who really want it) or simply keep shut (advisable, otherwise you may be nailed to a cross or made into a statue upon which politicians, followers, apostles and piegons shower their admiration in slightly dissimilar ways).
Solitude is not something you do 24x7...that's ...um...ok, I'll accept it if you're Batman..but even he has to descend into action and do all the POW, BAM BIFF stuff.
Solitude is , in my opinion, a prerequisite to any deep contemplative act...and this solitude, if not available in the form of real 'physical solitude' can be sought in the form of 'mental solitude; by way of complete detachment from one's immediate experiences and the 'merely personal' aspects of one's existence. This IS HARD...but pretty much resonates with KrishNA's counsel to one Partha dude who had some starting-trouble OUAT in Kurukshetra.
Case 2: There is something @Absolute, and it is not precisely knowable...you can make abstractions of it, but all of them will be imprecise
In this case, I would still argue, that to reach your zone of optimal abstraction in relation to the absolute, you will need to go solitary at least for a while...then on, you must understand (I am sure you do), that all discussions of what you have abstracted with other seekers, must be for 'fun'...for no abstraction can completely describe the whole
Case 3. There is an absolute - it is not knowable, and it may never be known in any useful way
You can still look for it...it's fun, and all that...solitude may still be relevant, but I guess knowing that you can never know what you wish to know, may take the drive out of you..however it may be important to pursue a course of solitude + contemplation to find out that the absolute may be ther,e but you cannot know it given your cognitive cosntraints...even if you cannot know something, to try and find out that you cannot is far better (okay with some strong exceptions...you cannot ';try and find out that you cannot do surgery on a patient :p)to simply take someone's word and say 'yup..all that;'s too hard'.
Case 4. There is no such thing as an absolute...
This is also likely (as we really don't know...something Feynman said comes to mind...'nothing that is not surrounded by some uncertainty can be really true'...or something to that effect)...claims of certain knowledge, esp of something like the absolute...always makes one raise an eyebrow at least a tenth of an inch...!If there is no absolute...then we can still do what we did in cases 1, 2, 3 but once we personally feel there is no point in further exertion, we must make peace with what we have come to understand, even though it may not be absolute in any sense.
#2 When I said we look for symmetry for our needs and convenience, I probably
did narrow down the perspective. I meant it more in terms of our need
to figure out what some thing is, and why it is so. Things like computational costs are of significance only because of our limitations, computationally,
or intelligence wise. Those are restrictions imposed on us. Look at something like turbulence in fluids, nearly 200 years of work and we have no clue how to deal with non-linearity, chaotic systems. We cannot imagine right now about modeling something like the stock market accurately, no one knows human behaviour. The information we have about problems in symmetry is enough to meet
our needs at this point. It is after all what you perceive that you put into mathematics.
It is not always what you perceive that you put into mathematics. Actually, human behaviour is not entirely beyond understanding either...progress is being made, and we'll have to wait to see how it pans out. Actually, the computational constraint, may not even be a constraint imposed on human agents who can compute...it may be something fundamental to the universe...something that makes mathemtical regularities that minimise the number of bits needed to encode information more likely to be 'selected' from a class of possibilities...I dunno...regarding perception, evolution and 'reality,. there is an obvious problem....we evolved to perceive some things and not some other things...agreed...but some of the things we do perceive, need to be 'real enough' most of the time...otherwise we would not have survived to tell the tale...imagine if prehistoric men had consistently mistaken a friendly neighbourhood sabre-tooth for a potential mater who had missed a prehistoric dentist's appointment!!
We see something, and then we 'use' some of the things we 'see'...and when we have perceptual illusions like mirages or hallucinations...we 'see' something but we are not able to 'use' what we see...I have argued along with a friend who is an ardent pragmatist, that this dual-definition of the knowledge of the 'real'...as something knowable and something useful (not my trick, it's old.... used to be known as sat-kArya-vAdA), may tell us that we 'do' perceive what 'is out there'...so maybe we [erceve things which are integral to physical reality and maybe the mathematics which describes these things effectively (in terms of the least number of bits of info needed to completely encode something), is actually 'real'.
I dunno..just my tuppence worth.
#3 I'm not even talking about being wary of recognition. When you seek something absolute I don't think the situation arises at all. It's about distancing yourself from self, everything around you is a consequence of self. The only thing that drives
us as a species is that search for something absolute, something that will help us understand everything that goes on. Just that different people approach it in different
ways. The very fact that we make laws, impose restrictions in our society, pin things down
to order, is a testament to our inability to deal with anything that can be arbitrary.
The only thing that drives us a species is DNA and its natural need for being passed on. The whole idea of being 'vehicles' for genetic material is quite unpalatable...and it does seem easier to believe in other views. If you thinkg humans have transcended biological advantage, and can therefore be spoken of as a species driving to attain something intangible...hmm..I think you can say that about a a small subset of people who really really have given it all a 'little tink', and are therefore striving ...the rest dance to the tunes of the Double Helix.
Actually we may be pretty good at dealing with what's arbitrary...not all of us...ordered thinking, in which one tends to impose 'structure' on everything and ry to avoid random, spontaenous, arbitrary things, is one cognitive style ..and probably the dominant socially acceptable one. There are thinkers who exhibit an alternative style of thinking which has no issues with the arbitrary...which in fact abhors structure and formal rules.
So I think we can't generalise here.
Sorry to ask at this late stage in the exchange, but could you please give me 'your' definition or description of the word 'Self'...as 'you' use it?
I can understand your third point only when I've got the drift on this one.
Thanks for the comment anyway...and if I sound like someone who's had ' a couple'...well...your comment caught me n a Sunday afternoon at the library...and proximity to philosophy books always has a distorting effect on one's common sense...which , if reason had allowed it to prevail, might have inspired me to reply to you with a pally 'What-ho!'
Best Wishes
P.S: At the end of the day, you must strive earnestly to connect to the One True Bunny
@ Anand
"Solitude is not something you do 24x7...that's ...um...ok, I'll accept it if you're Batman..but even he has to descend into action and do all the POW, BAM BIFF stuff."
LOL!
I think you just put everything I said into perspective!
Kids, kids, kids! In all seriousness, I can fit all the wisdom in the universe into three words. So, pay attention, here it is: FUCK IT ALL!
The dude abides! (If you can't place the reference, you may need a White Russian.)
Macnife, Partha
Amen.
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